New film takes 'quiet' look at Mexico's drug-war violence

MEXICO CITY -- A new documentary on drug-war violence in Mexico is perhaps most remarkable for what it does not portray.

There are no shootouts, no decapitated bodies hanging from highway overpasses.

Instead, award-winning filmmaker Natalia Almada takes her audience into the quiet, busy world of the Humaya Gardens cemetery in Culiacan, the Sinaloa capital considered the historic center of Mexican drug trafficking.

Here death is relentless. With its garish mausoleums and extravagant crypts, the cemetery is the final resting place for numerous drug cartel capos and their legions of mostly young henchmen.

The film, "El Velador" ("The Night Watchman"), follows Martin, who works the graveyard shift, so to speak, at Humaya Gardens. He arrives at sunset, sits or dozes through the night (it is too dangerous to actually patrol the grounds after dark, he says, because of partying, trigger-happy drug goons) and tidies up in the morning, picking up beer bottles and sweeping before walking off in the yellow daylight.

"I fell in love with him as a character," Almada said, citing Martin's "quiet, stoic presence."

"He asks us to live with him, in the cemetery, at his pace," she said. "He is the clock of the cemetery."

Almada said her goal in making "El Velador" was to offer a "more contemplative" view of the violence that dominates Mexico today, not the sensationalistic portrait too common in the daily media.

"I wanted to humanize it, to put it on a more human scale," she said in a telephone interview from the U.S., where the documentary has been screening this week.

Almada's film is stark and sparse. There is virtually no dialogue. Martin occasionally offers a comment; we hear a single conversation among gravediggers about whether the latest kingpin has really been slain, as authorities claim.

What we do hear are the sounds of daily life amid the dead: a shovel hitting earth, a priest's intonations, a child playing hopscotch on tombs. And, from the radio in Martin's beat-up truck and his wavy black-and-white TV set, we hear the litany of drug-war mayhem as broadcasters read the "nota roja," the crime news. Bodies dumped roadside, young men kidnapped; "Culiacan has become a warzone," the broadcaster says.

And at times it seems the cemetery can barely keep up. In one sequence, the builders are finishing a gravesite even as a body waits in a hearse and a woman is heard wailing for her son; the concrete crypt is drying as mourning wreathes are being gathered.

"It's also the futility of it all," Almada said. The death toll rises and rises. Martin waters the dirt. A widow mops her husband's mausoleum, over and over again.

Almada filmed in Humaya Gardens off and on for several months in 2009-2010.

"El Velador" is a co-production of Altamura Films, Latino Public Broadcasting and American Documentary/POV. It begins airing in the Los Angeles area Friday on PBS affiliates. Check local listings.

You can watch a trailer here, and the film will be streaming on the POV website until the end of the year.

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Video: A trailer from the documentary "El Velador."  Credit: Altamura Films

Mexico tycoons widen U.S. sports reach with Padres, Chivas USA deals

MEXICO CITY -- A cousin of the world's richest man, Carlos Slim, has become a part owner of the San Diego Padres, and a married couple who are Mexican millionaires have taken control of Chivas USA, a Major League Soccer team.

The deals, announced in separate reports Wednesday, widen the reach of Mexico's hyper-wealthy in the high-stakes world of professional sports in Southern California.

Alfredo Harp Helu, a billionaire banker and Slim's cousin, appeared Wednesday on a list of eight new part-owners of slightly less than half of San Diego's Major League Baseball team.

The sale was reported to be worth $800 million during negotiations, but details on the final purchase price paid by members of the team's new minority group of owners were not revealed. Harp's wealth is estimated at $1 billion.

From its Carson-based clubhouse, meanwhile, Chivas USA announced that Jorge Vergara and Angelica Fuentes, the founder and chief executive, respectively, of the Omnilife nutritional supplements company have acquired the second half of the squad's ownership from partners, becoming full owners.

Vergara and Fuentes are already owners of the original Chivas in Guadalajara, the popular First Division team in Mexico's second largest city. The details of the Chivas USA deal were not released.

It's been a good week for Fuentes, one of Mexico's wealthiest women. On Tuesday she was named a chief patron of the newly renovated Rufino Tamayo Museum, which accompanied a minor controversy in Mexico's art world.

Fuentes' name appears prominently in a renovated gallery inside the museum, along with a gallery named in honor of billionaire Carlos Hank Rhon, brother of the scandal-ridden former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Hank Rhon. Critics bemoaned the presence of the Hank Rhon name inside the museum as a symbol of the increasing privatization of public art institutions in Mexico.

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-- Daniel Hernandez

Photo:  Chivas USA fans gather for opening day at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., in 2005. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times 

Mexico's first loss to U.S. at home, on a Mexican American's goal

MEXICO CITY -- It was a sweet Olympic gold victory for Mexican soccer, yes. But that was last week.

On Wednesday night, Mexico was defeated by the United States in a friendly match at the cavernous  high-altitude Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, 1-0, the first win for the U.S. on Mexican soil in 75 years of a storied and often bitter rivalry.

The only goal of the game came from U.S. defender Michael Orozco Fiscal, 26, a Mexican American native of Orange.

When it happened, in the 79th minute, utter silence seemed to befall the entire Mexican capital for a second or two. The United States had not won a single game at the Azteca, and Mexico had barely lost there against any opponent, in official matches or friendlies.

Watch the game-winning goal here:

Mexico's current sports superstar, Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez -- who didn't play for gold in London in the men's soccer final on Saturday -- attempted a few desperate strikes in the final minutes to salvage the game.

But U.S. goalie Tim Howard delivered crucial saves for the Americans, despite being battered with harrasment from the stands, a custom relished by fans at the Azteca. (At least one pesky person Wednesday was distracting the U.S. goalie with the light of a green laser.)

There was surprisingly little bad blood for Orozco in Mexico's media the next morning and among armchair analysts online.

Where could an ardently nationalist fan draw a line on criticism anyway? The U.S. friendly roster is rife with border-blurring athletes, a reflection of the complex historical migration patterns between the  countries, and maybe a little of that free-trade spirit that has defined the binational relationship since 1994.

Edgar Castillo, a defender born in Las Cruces, N.M., has played for both the Mexican and U.S. national teams. Midfielder Joe Corona -- half-Mexican, half-Salvadoran and born in Los Angeles -- plays professionally for Tijuana. And Herculez Gomez, born in L.A. to Mexican American parents, plays in Mexico for Pachuca.

Game-winner Orozco's parents are from the Mexican states of Durango and Queretaro. He was born in Orange County but plays professionally in Mexico for San Luis.

"That's history," he told one news outlet after the game. "It does leave a mark in my heart."

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In Mexico, Olympic gold is a welcome chance to celebrate

-- Daniel Hernandez

Photo: U.S. defender Michael Orozco, right, celebrates with teammate Terrence Boyd after scoring during a friendly soccer game against Mexico in Mexico City, Aug. 15, 2012. Credit: Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press

In second Mexico vote, this time of migrants, Vazquez Mota wins

MEXICO CITY -- The tiny but closely watched migrant segment of the Mexican electorate voted firmly for Josefina Vazquez Mota of the governing National Action Party (PAN), an opposite result to her third-place showing in the national race.

The results announced Monday by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) also showed a 23% increase in voter-abroad participation over the 2006 election, the first time Mexicans living abroad had the right to vote.

In all, 40,714 votes were counted from 91 countries, with a wide majority of those from the U.S., reflecting the deep civic engagement with Mexico that many established immigrants can maintain after decades away.

Voters abroad registered with the IFE months in advance to receive a postage-paid ballot by mail, which had to be returned by Saturday. Electoral authorities on Monday noted they were also able to reduce the budget for the vote-from-abroad count by more than half.

"It was a success because the goal was to get more votes than in 2006 at less of a cost, and that's what happened," said Ana Isabel Fuentes, IFE spokeswoman for the vote-abroad program.

The news was a bright spot in the post-election buzz for the PAN.

A PAN-led government under President Vicente Fox pushed changes in electoral laws in 2005 to give Mexicans living abroad the right to vote, which migrants in the United States had lobbied for since the 1970s. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had resisted giving migrants the vote throughout its presidencies.

PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto won Sunday's election, returning the party to power after 12 years in opposition. During the campaign, supporters of the PRI opened an unofficial campaign office in the Los Angeles area, and that may have given the party a boost over its showing in 2006. 

Vazquez Mota won 42.1% of the 2012 migrant vote, results showed. She was followed by leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with 38.9%. The PRI finished with 15.6%, a low third place compared with its national victory of at least 38%, according to Monday's ongoing national tally.

In 2006, the PRI finished with a paltry 4% of the votes sent from abroad.

The migrant vote is minuscule compared with the tens of millions who vote in Mexico, but they often remain influential leaders in their communities here and account for a large portion of Mexico's wealth through remittances. 

In an interview with The Times conducted before the election, Peña Nieto's advisor on migrant affairs said that upon winning, the PRI would maintain and expand migrant-friendly programs developed by two consecutive PAN governments.

Arnulfo Valdivia, a political economist and dual Mexican-U.S. citizen himself, said Peña Nieto's administration would also seek to make it easier for the estimated 12 million Mexicans living in the U.S. to vote in future elections. Currently the IFE does not issue voter cards outside the country.

"The phenomenon of migration cannot be a point of pride," Valdivia said. "It's fundamentally a reflection of the lack of opportunities that exist in Mexico."

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Photo: Ramiro Romero shows his ballot as a voter abroad in Mexico's July 1 presidential election, May 24, 2012, in the Lynwood suburb of Los Angeles. Credit: Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times 

Mexico's PRI opens campaign office in Los Angeles

LYNWOOD, Calif. -- Immigrants supporting Mexico's formerly long-ruling political party have opened a campaign office in the Los Angeles area for its 2012 presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The office, opened Thursday at a Mexico-themed mall in this suburb, is an unofficial headquarters for the party in Southern California and represents a shift both for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and for the increasingly influential communities of Los Angeles-area immigrants from various regions of Mexico.

Officially the office is for a group calling itself the Committee of Migrants United for Mexico. Leaders said they would be phone-banking with their relatives back home to encourage them to vote for the PRI.

"We opened this office so that any migrant who has a proposal [can] pass it to us, and we pass it" to the presidential candidate, said Roman Cabral, a former migrant-abroad state legislator from Zacatecas state.

"We will have direct communication with Mexico City," he said.

Photographs of Peña Nieto adorn the walls of the mostly bare new office, where tortas and pan de dulce were served for participants and journalists, a party custom.

And just like back in Mexico, the PRI activists wore the party's bright red campaign color and spoke glowingly about Peña Nieto -- who is leading in polls -- and what they described as the party's "regenerated" identity.

Despite violence, music festival big in Mexico's Monterrey

  

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY--The independent music scene has proven itself alive and well in Mexico's wealthiest but increasingly violent city of Monterrey. Last weekend's NRML festival took place without a major problem and was the largest in three years.

Read about it in this Calendar report by the Mexico City Bureau's Daniel Hernandez.

Metropolitan Monterrey was once a refuge from the nation's raging drug war. But it has steadily fallen  into the same vortex of gang shootings and neighborhood takeovers that plague Mexicans elsewhere. One of the deadliest incidents in the entire drug war was the August 2011 firebombing of a Monterrey casino, in which 52 people were killed.

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Photo: Cumbia rockers Sonido San Francisco perform during the NRMAL festival in San Pedro Garza Garcia, a suburb of Monterrey, Mexico, on Saturday. Credit: Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times.

The worst air pollution in the world

You may think the air is bad in Los Angeles, but researchers say it's worse in India and Bangladesh. A new study released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, found that India had the worst air pollution in the world, followed by Bangladesh and Nepal. The United States ties with a slew of other countries for first place, including Japan and Argentina. Other interesting tidbits from the rankings include:

-- Ecuador was the most improved country when it came to air quality; Russia and Iraq had the biggest drops in the effects of their air on human health.

-- The worst countries for air pollution are clustered in South Asia and Central Africa.

You can delve deeper into the study and explore an interactive map of the findings using the Yale University Environmental Performance Index.

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Photo: India Gate war memorial is seen through haze in New Delhi. Credit: Saurabh Das / Associated Press

Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar on his Oscar-nominated 'Footnote'

REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM -- The Israeli film "Footnote" was nominated in  the Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film category Tuesday.  This is Israel's fourth nomination in recent years and the second for producer Joseph Cedar, whose movie "Beaufort" put the country's film industry back on the red carpet in 2008 after more than two decades.

This year's entry is markedly different from previously nominated films. "Beaufort" told the tale of the last days of Israel's decades-long entanglement in South Lebanon; in the animated "Waltz with Bashir," director Ari Folman reconstructed his own memories as a young soldier when that war had just begun. "Ajami" was a Jewish-Arab co-production that placed the mixed town of Jaffa in the spotlight.

"Footnote"  portrays the relations between two Talmudic scholars, a father and son occupying the same niche in the unforgiving and stubborn world of academia and scholarship. The relatively obscure and off-topic subject matter was a gamble. International reviews were mixed but it paid off hugely with Israeli movie-goers and left its mark at Cannes, winning the best screenplay award.

"Who knows, maybe this time it will happen," Cedar told Israeli journalists, saying it was flattering to share the nomination with a list of excellent movies.

The other nominees in the foreign language category include the Iranian film "A Separation," by Asghar Farhadi. Speaking to journalists after the announcement, Cedar said he and Farhadi had met on several occasions.

"We have had very interesting conversations," Cedar said. And assuming that he understood Farhadi's interpreter correctly, "there are more than a few things common to our situations." Cedar said there was "something poetic" about the competition.

The other films nominated in the category are "Bullhead" from Belgium, "In Darkness" from Poland and "Monsieur Lazhar" from Canada.

The Academy Awards will be presented Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

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Photo: Filmmaker Joseph Cedar at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Credit: Stephanie Cornfield / For The Times

 

Kim Jong Il death: Heir likely to be influenced by aunt and uncle

Kim Jong Un, designated last year to lead the North Korean family dynasty in its third generation, may be heavily influenced by an aunt and uncle, analysts said.

In recent years, as his health failed, longtime North Korea leader Kim Jong Il moved to cement the authority of his sister and brother-in-law as he prepared to anoint the youngest of his three sons, Kim Jong Un, still in his 20s, as the country's new leader.

PHOTOS: Kim Jong Il's body on display

Kim Jong Il was close to his younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui. Described as having a fiery and energetic temperament, she has spent years in the ruling Workers' Party. The sister was increasingly seen in public with Kim after his stroke in 2008.

"Kim Jong Il is very proud of her. She is a very attractive person to the North Koreans, as well. She is like a strong man with a strong character," Jang Sung-min, a former South Korean lawmaker who wrote a book on the North Korean leader, told The Times in 2010.

"North Korea is a Confucian country and people were concerned Kim Jong Un was too young. They need to have the older face of Kim Kyong Hui next to his," Brent Choi, a longtime North Korea analyst, said in an interview with The Times last year.

FULL COVERAGE: Kim Jong Il | 1942-2011

The uncle, Jang Song Taek, has had a long history with the levers of power in the North Korean government, fueled by luck, family connections and political acumen.

Philippine floods: More coffins needed as death toll nears 1,000

The death toll from powerful floods that swept the southern Philippines is nearing 1,000, forcing the navy to ship hundreds of white coffins to help overwhelmed aid teams.

Crews were still discovering bodies floating in the sea and mud Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, four days after Typhoon Washi dumped a month's worth of rain in 12 hours on Friday on portions of Mindanao Island. The area doesn't normally get hit with such muscular storms, which pulverized homes and uprooted trees.

Bodies were still being recovered from the mud-filled wastelands that were once the cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, on the northern edge of Mindanao Island. The AP said 45,000 people were crowding evacuation centers, and officials were running out of coffins.

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Bloomberg news service said President Benigno Aquino has ordered an investigation into why the death toll was high.

"We need to know what went wrong, who was at fault and who should be held accountable," the president said. "I ask myself why this tragedy had to happen."